Tick-tock of the clock.
Robie and Reel sat on opposite sides of the table in the small conference room at Langley. It was a room they had sat in many times before.
Only this time was different. For a variety of reasons, and none of them good.
Robie glanced down at Reel’s oblique. In Mississippi, a bullet had struck her there.
“Healed?” he asked.
“Apparently” was her reply.
She glanced at his right arm, which had been torn apart and then surgically repaired. “How about your arm?”
“Apparently good enough.”
Robie fiddled with something in his pocket. It was the note that he had found on his bed. He wanted to pull it out and ask her what the hell it meant.
Then the door opened and they both sat up straighter.
The woman entering the room was Blue Man’s boss, the director of Central Intelligence. Blue Man’s new boss. The old one had resigned due to stress and an inability to manage it as one professional crisis after another slammed into his Agency.
The new DCI was Rachel Cassidy. She was in her late forties. She’d been an intelligence officer in the Army, then in politics for a short while. She’d worked a few years in the financial world on Wall Street, then returned to her roots where she’d held positions in the Defense Department and the NSC before being named deputy director of the CIA.
Now she held the top spot, and she looked up to the task.
She was petite and wiry with shoulder-length brown hair. She was dressed in a dark pantsuit with a white blouse. She wore no jewelry and only the barest of makeup. Her eyes were wide and hazel and held on you like a laser. By her demeanor the term wasting time did not appear to be in her lexicon.
Cassidy was regarded as a thorough professional who saw no obstacles, only solutions, and whose bullshit meter was among the best in the business. That last attribute was an absolute necessity in this field, mainly because she had to deal with elected officials, who could spew crap like an untended fire hose did water.
She sat down and looked first at Robie and then at Reel.
“You’ve had a preliminary briefing.”
It was not really a question, yet both of them nodded.
Cassidy leaned forward and looked at Robie. “London.”
Robie glanced at her.
“Are you fully recovered?” asked Cassidy.
“Nothing to recover from,” replied Robie.
Cassidy looked at Reel. “And you?”
Now Reel looked directly at Robie. “Same answer, Director.”
“Good. Roger left here six days ago on vacation.”
“I didn’t think Blue Man took vacations,” said Robie.
“Everyone takes vacations, Robie, even Blue Man,” Cassidy said briskly. “He flew to Denver and then drove to his final destination. He did this every year about this time. He was going fly-fishing for a week.”
Both Robie and Reel looked surprised by this. Neither knew much if anything about Blue Man’s personal life. That was just the way their world worked. Need to know extended to all corners, both professional and personal.
“Why there?” asked Reel.
“He was from the area. Born there, raised there. And he went back there pretty much every year.”
Again, the pair registered surprise at this.
“Did he go alone?” asked Robie.
“Yes. Sometimes he went with some old friends, but not this year. He went alone and a few days ago he vanished.”
“The place is called Grand,” noted Robie. “Was it a mining town or something?”
“They thought it was, apparently, until they realized the gold and silver were mostly on the other side of the state.”
“I assume the police have been called in,” said Reel.
“The local police force, as you can imagine, is quite small. The state police were called in, but they’ve found no trace. They’ve officially departed the situation.”
“What were they told?” asked Reel.
“That a man was missing. They know nothing of his background. And that won’t change.”
“We’re not investigators, Director,” said Robie.
She swiveled her laser gaze around to him. “That’s not what Blue Man told me after your trip to Mississippi. He said you were actually quite good at it.”
“We made mistakes along the way,” said Reel.
“Just don’t repeat them here.”
“Wouldn’t it be more prudent to enlist the FBI on something like this?” asked Robie. “We’re not a law enforcement agency. We have no arresting authority.”
“The Bureau has been notified and is monitoring the situation. But we like to look after our own, Robie.” She stared hard at him as she said this. “I think you got a dose of that in Mississippi, didn’t you?”
Robie glanced away. “Yes.”
“Blue Man’s disappearance may be unrelated to who he is and what he does. But I still consider this a national security issue, and I have asked for and received backing on this position from the highest levels. That brings it directly into our jurisdiction. And the last thing we need to reveal is that a high-ranking intelligence officer has gone missing. The world is a tinderbox right now. This would add enough fuel to that fire that I’m not sure any of us can accurately predict the downside. You will have the assistance and cooperation of all relevant federal agencies, but you and Reel know him best. That’s why you’re here. He covered your backs many a time. Now you can return the favor.” She rose. “So find him. And bring him back safely, if at all possible. You’ll receive fuller particulars and all logistical details before you leave here.”
Then she was gone.
On to the next crisis, no doubt.
Robie looked at Reel. “I guess we’re working together again.”
She nodded curtly.
“Whether we want to or not,” he added.
She didn’t nod at this comment.
He said, “We need to put aside any personal issues and get this job done.”
Reel glanced over at him. Her gaze was reminiscent of Cassidy’s, and it was not the first time that Robie had felt the burn of it.
“I have no personal issues about anything, Robie,” said Reel.
“Good, glad we got that straightened out.”
“We find Blue Man,” she said. “Then we go our separate ways.” She rose and walked out.
Robie took out the note that she’d left him, balled it up, and tossed it into the trash can.
CHAPTER
8
Robie and Reel rode government wings to Denver, landed, and retrieved a large, hard-sided case that was waiting for them at the airport. They had reserved a big Yukon, and they loaded in their stuff and set off heading northeast.
They had not spoken on the three-hour flight and had passed the town of Fort Morgan on Interstate 76 before Robie broke the silence.
“Eastern Plains. Westernmost section of the Great Plains where it notches into Nebraska. Not much out here. Pawnee Buttes, Comanche National Grassland. Rolling hills, flat farmland, one-room schoolhouses, forests, canyons, rivers, and lakes. Not much rain. Small towns. Yuma and Sterling are big cities out here. Dwindling populations. People heading to somewhere else. Never really recovered from the Dust Bowl in the thirties.”
Reel glanced at him. “Thanks for the guided tour,” she said drily.
“Just making small talk.”
“Since when?”
“Since now, apparently. You know, to fill in the gaps that appeared out of nowhere.”
She made no reply to this, but stared back out the window at the stark, rugged landscape as they got off the interstate and kept going more east than north. As they drove on, the conditions of the roads deteriorated from paved to gravel, and Reel saw some roads that were only dirt.
They’d passed one farmhouse in the last four miles. The rest of the land was just empty.
“I guess Blue Man liked his privacy,” she said.
“Didn’t know he was from here. Or that he was a fly fisherman.”
“It wasn’t that sort of a relationship,” replied Reel. “It was just work.”
“Maybe for you.”
She shot him a glance. “I want to find him too, Robie.”